(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to color photographs improved in preservability, and particularly to color photographs improved in preservability that have been obtained by making chemically inactive the aromatic amine type color developing agents (hereinafter referred to as aromatic amine developing agents) and their oxidized product that remain in the silver halide photographic materials after color development processing, and to a process of the production of said color photographs and silver halide color photographic materials employed therefor.
(2) Description of the Prior Art
In the field of silver halide color photographic materials, for example, as dye image forming couplers (hereinafter referred to as couplers), there have been developed, along with couplers that give bright cyan, magenta, and yellow dyes with less subsidiary absorption that afford good color reproduction, highly active couplers through which color development completes within a short time. New additives and other agents to draw further enhance the excellent performance of these couplers are also being developed. However, in actualy this new performance caused a deterioration of the preservability of the color photographs due to interaction with the components of the processing solutions that remain in the photosensitive material after the processing.
It is known that, of the processing solution components remaining in the photographic material after the development processing, in particular the aromatic primary amine compound, that is, a developing agent and the compounds derived therefrom, damages the fastness of the image under the influence, for example, of light, heat, and oxygen during long-term storage, or they themselves cause self-coupling or interact with coexistents to change to colored materials, resulting in so-called "stain". This can be considered a fatal defect in a color photograph.
On the other hand, many studies have been made to prevent images from deteriorating and to prevent stain. For example, ideas have been suggested to employ couplers that fade out less, to use fading preventive agents to prevent fading due to light, or to use ultraviolet absorbing agents to prevent an image from being deteriorated by ultraviolet rays.
Although it is recognized that the above compounds have an effect as agents to prevent a dye image from fading or discoloring, the compounds cannot successfully meet the customer demand for high quality images, and they have not yet achieved overall excellence due to their problems of changing the hue, causing fogging or defective dispersion, or forming fine crystals after the application of the emulsion.
However, the stain in question in the invention is produced when aromatic amine compounds taken into the color photograph after the development processing are oxidized with oxygen or the like during prolonged storage of the color photograph, and which at the same time react with contained colorless compounds, such as color image forming compounds (couplers), to form colored compounds. The inventors of this invention tried to develop methods for scavenging aromatic amine compounds taken into the color photograph or the oxidized product of such aromatic amine compounds. However, since the effect of these scavenging compounds also often decreased, for example due to decomposition or deterioration during long-term storage of the color photograph, and the amount of the aromatic amine compounds taken into the color photograph changed notably with the type of development processing, in actual fact the compounds intended to scavenge either the involved aromatic amine compounds or the oxidized product thereof had been unsatisfactory.